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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (42623)	4/7/2010 11:15:22 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

I'm using baseline to mean the line serving as the basis for calculating the effect of the policy being analyzed. The actual historical record is a very poor basis since measuring changes from it isn't measuring the effects of the specific change your measuring. Neither is measuring from the trendline, since the change is not the only change that is occurring. The baseline for me is what would have occurred had the policy change your measuring not happened. Yes we are guessing at what the baseline (by my definition) is, which is a disadvantage, but it has the advantage of being the important issue. We want to know, or at least develop an opinion about, the effect of the policy, not the effect of the policy combined with 50 billion other changes that we aren't evaluating.